SeedWhere

SeedWhere is intended as a tool to support decisions on moving plant material across environmental gradients. Seedwhere is a pun on the word Software with the idea of "Where can I move Seed"? The model maps climate similarity across large geographic regions using the Gower similarity metric. This web-based beta-version allows users to access several North American wide climate models and investigate the similarity of current climate to projected future climates. The climate models used here are 300 arcseconds or approximately 10km in resolution. While no panacea, the seedwhere tool provides an intuitive approach to visualizing how far forest managers might risk moving seed or other plant material away from its maternal climate in the absence of detailed population genetics work. The types of questions this might be relevant for include: how similar are the environmental conditions at a seed collection site to other areas; how similar are the environmental conditions at a regeneration area to potential seed collection sites; how similar are the environmental conditions at a regeneration area to seed already in storage; how similar are the environmental conditions at areas where seed lots have been collected; where are the environmental conditions similar to a particular seedlot source; how similar are the environmental conditions between two particular sites; and how similar are the environmental conditions between two particular seedlots that have already been collected? Output is a colour or black and white map that shows the similarity of climate on a 0 to 1 scale. Seedwhere normalizes the values for each selected climate variable so that the 0 to 1 similarity metric can be calculated for the set of selected variables. When using the climate change models, the program compares the current climate at the selected location to the projected climate in the selected region or Area of Interest - OR THE RECIPORICAL. The output also includes a table that summarizes the range of values of the selected climate variables over the geographic area selected. The table also shows what each .05 change in the gower metric value means in terms of each climate variable. This is intended to help interpret the significance of the map legend in terms of climate.